WASHINGTON - Decades after the civil rights movement, racial disparities in
income, education and homeownership persist and, by some measurements, are
growing.

White households had incomes that were 66 percent higher than Blacks and 40
percent higher than Hispanics last year, according to data released Tuesday by
the Census Bureau.

White adults also were more likely than Black and Hispanic adults to have
college degrees and to own their own homes. They were less likely to live in
poverty. "Race is so associated with class in the United States that it may not
be direct discrimination, but it still matters indirectly," said Dalton Conley,
a sociology professor at New York University and the author of Being Black,
Living in the Red.

Seventy-five percent of White households owned their homes in 2005, compared
with 46 percent of Black households and 48 percent of Hispanic households.

Home ownership is near an all-time high in the United States, but racial gaps
have increased in the past 25 years.

Black families also have been hurt by the decline of manufacturing jobs - the
same jobs that helped propel many White families into the middle class after
World War II, said Hilary Shelton, director of the NAACP's Washington office.

Among Hispanics, education, income and home ownership gaps are exacerbated by
recent Latin American immigrants.